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Tillie leans back on her hands, her head tilting to the side. “Let’s just say that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”
I choke on my inhale, fist banging on my chest. Squinting around the smoke, I hand it back to her. “You too?”
She slips it from my fingers. “Oh, sister. You havenoidea.”
“Perdita was rightfully yours, was it not?” I ask, searching her eyes. I hadn’t heard much, but what I did hear was that Tillie could have taken Perdita all those years ago because of her bloodline. Everyone thought she was just an average hang-a-long to Mom, but she wasn’t. She was a queen. “Why didn’t you take it?”
“Because she wanted my King too.” She leans forward, squashing out the blunt. “Are you going to allow her prodigy the same?”
I think over her words. If she had said this to me a couple weeks ago, I probably would have blushed. Nothing was going on between him and I but what was on the surface. Now I know that I have to say something. I can’t brush it off. “There’s nothing between War and I.”
She ponders a moment. “Honey…”
I swallow roughly, but the splinters from my rib cage fracturing are stuck in my throat. “It’s hopeless, is what I mean.” I’ve never outwardly expressed my interest in War. The sex? Whatever. Sex to us is a game. A tool. We don’t dive too deep into it, but this is something else. I’ve never shown my vulnerability toward him. Has he been gentle with me growing up, during the times I needed? Yes. One hundred times overyes. But more so recently, I’ve seen the shadow side to him, and the more I stepped in, the further he stepped out. It is a classic game of cat and mouse.
The breath I take feels like a knife in the heart. “I guess in simple terms, the boy I fell in love with doesn’t exist.”
The corners of her eyes fall. She’s the only one out of the mothers who has never touched Botox or plastic surgery. Aunty Saint only dabbled with Botox, but my mother… well. Vanity. There’s nothing wrong with it. I know forsureI’d be freezing my face as soon as I see a wrinkle. Mom would always add that she’d go out exactly as she’d been played like.
Like a toy. Plastic.
Their inside jokes never made a lot of sense to any of us and I kind of don’t want to know what they mean, since I’m almost certain they had all kind of slept together. Happy families and all.
“Halen.” My eyes drift to hers. “You don’t have to be that person around me. I know there’s a lot of pressure with being Bishop’s daughter and a Hayes in general, but with me, you can just be a twenty-year-old young woman who is confused about who she loves.”
“It was an accident.” The words burn my throat like I swallowed cyanide. “I shouldn’t have fallen in love with him, Tillie. Somehow, somewhere along the journey, I did. I gave him my whole-ass heart without realizing, and now, the only person in this entire world who can break it doesn’t actually have one himself.”
She pauses a moment, her brows lifting just enough to show her surprise. Her shoulders relax as she places her hand on my knee. “He does. I know he does. I’m by no means making excuses for him, because you know you’re my girl, but in this world, you know how it is. We go by a different set of rules than other people. He may not show it the conventional way—” Ya think? "—but it only makes the love that we all share that much more special. It’s the kind of love that survives shit. To love a beast, you must be a beast. Unless you’re Saint, then you better fuck like one.”
We both burst out laughing and it doesn’t die out until my chest burns and tears have dampened my cheeks. I probably shouldn’t have said all that.Fuck.
I sigh. “Doesn’t matter, because I’ll deny myself the feeling for as long as I need.”
Movement catches my eye in the corner of the room. “Now, this is a scary scene…”
I push myself off the counter and land on my feet. I don’t have it in me to go another round with him. Not right now.
Tillie’s words stop me before I reach the other side. “Dinner party at twelve!” We already know. And I’m definitely not prepared for it.
Before this family dinner party, I need to mentally prepare. Too many Kings in one room can either be a very good thing, or a very bad thing.
Kicking my bedroom door closed, I lean my head against the wood. The week after the ritual has been testing so far, but the weight of my secret is becoming heavy. I always knew it would sink me over time.
Blood strums through my ears rhythmically, releasing the tension in my nerves as the minutes pass. The claws of my consciousness gnaw at the cavity in my chest as I move to my bedside dresser.
I lean over to plug my phone in to charge when the cord falls between the crack of my bed.
“Of course.”
My knees hit the floor as I aimlessly reaching for the cord, when my fingertips graze a hard surface. I slide it out from beneath my bed with a waft of ancient leather.
My finger traces the lines that are engraved over the top. I think back to the night I found it, in the back of the boy’s car from Bayonet Falls. For whatever reason, I wanted to take it.
The backs of my thighs hit my bed as I lower to the edge, tugging at the leather strings that keep it closed. It falls open and the papers give way…
Today was like every other day. I stared back at myself in the mirror for minutes. Or maybe it was hours. It wasn’t a good day, but I’d decided to finally journal. Try to make sense of the days that seem to lose me. Maybe one day, I’d be able to comeback here, to pages so familiar that they could almost whisper my deepest memories back to me. Well, I’d hope so anyway.
The scar on my face looked worse today. A brutal reminder of everything I’d been through. Ironic how it started from my temple and curled around the contours of my eye.
